The Mavericks have formally filed a protest in the wake of their overtime loss to the Rockets on Friday night.

Dallas contends that center Erick Dampier was inappropriately assessed a second technical foul, which led to his ejection.

Referees called the technical on Dampier during an eight-minute review of a flagrant foul assessed to Houston's Aaron Brooks. The play occurred with 1:01 remaining in overtime and the Rockets leading by six points.

"What the rule says is, when you review it, the reason it's reviewable is because you want to see if anybody else is involved and make sure that the appropriate penalties are assessed," said Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. "So you look at the review, and just like a Flagrant 2 can be downgraded to a personal foul or can be downgraded to no foul, when you look at that video, you should assess the appropriate penalty, which in this case is none.

"Because there's no question that not only was that not an elbow above the neck, not only was that not an elbow with an intention to harm, there wasn't even an elbow. There wasn't even an elbow. There wasn't even an elbow thrown. By any reasonable standard, that change should have been made, and I'm sure the refs didn't know you could make that change, so that's a misapplication of the rules."